Sales optimization is all about maximizing your team’s performance. Optimized sales means you’re closing more leads, selling more product, and getting the most out of your most valuable asset – your team of sales professionals. Here’s how to do it.
How Do You Maximize Your Team’s Performance?
Creating an Effective Process for Sales
They key to maximizing your team’s performance is creating an effective sales process. Your sales process is what marks the difference between super performers and low-grossing sales teams, as it forms the foundation for how you do what you do.
You need to continuously re-evaluate your process to look for pain points, minimize and handle customer objections, and adapt to a changing sales landscape. Always be looking for holes in your process that could use patching, or areas that could use improvement. No one is perfect, but with continual work, you can keep improving!
For the sales process to be effective, your sales and marketing team have to be aligned and in close communication.
Leads and sales funnels need to be shared, along with accountability for deliverables and follow-ups. Planning 
efforts need to be shared as well. For example, say the marketing team is launching a promotional campaign via email and social media to all customers who have been clients for five years or more. Is the sales team ready to follow up?
Continuous feedback ensures that everyone is on the same page, plans are developed in tandem, and all teams get the most possible benefit out of every lead, follow-up, and marketing campaign.
Analyze Past Sales
Sales metrics are your best friend. Analyze and track past sales data to optimize processes, come up with new marketing strategies, and improve your conversion rate. Aside from client feedback, past sales data and marketing metrics are your best resource for finding out what is and isn’t working, and adjusting your process and strategy accordingly.
Data also shows you what has already been accomplished. Use milestones to generate new leads and incentivize your sales team. By seeing how social media marketing, promo campaigns, and web traffic is doing, you can get more results from your sales calls and increased marketing ROI.
Establish Short, Medium, and Long-Term Sales Goals
Goal-setting is critical. When everyone on the team knows what they are working toward, your sales and marketing departments become a motivated, well-oiled machine. Include incentives when goals are reached, with larger goals earning your team larger rewards for achieving them.
Create a Profile for Your Ideal Customer
By creating a “profile” of what your ideal customer is like, lead generation and sales efforts will be focused more effectively. Always try to make sure leads are qualified, so that your team doesn’t waste time generating leads that won’t have any interest in what you’re selling.
When you sell to your ideal customer, you can develop a long-term relationship with them that translates into more
sales down the line. You might be able to close a customer or two who isn’t ideal, but they won’t stick around as long-term prospects. Treat the buyer’s journey as a long road. Focus on the ideal customers first, and nurturing a personal relationship with them that will last the test of time. This leads us to our next point.
Nurture & Manage Leads Effectively
When it comes to managing leads, timing is everything. Your goal when managing leads should be to develop long-term relationships with each. That means, don’t focus on “the sell.” Focus on building a relationship that will last, and closing deals will come naturally later on.
Final Thoughts
Optimizing your sales process means optimizing your business – one follows the other! When your sales force and marketing team is united, coordinated, and making the most of every lead, call, and campaign, your business will grow as sales performance improves…and so will your profits.